Quack! Quack! Time

TRAIL Wood #42 Earl Plato

The ‘Quack! Quack! At Marcy Pond last year. Daughter, Allison, and I experienced the great mating of the wood frogs. Perfect timing this year. “The excited quacking of domestic ducks,” as Ed teale wrote in his March 26th log. We were able to pick up a few of the little guys that early spring day. Here is Teale’s Trail Wood log record. I can picture his observations. Thanks Ed.
“ As though stalking deer, walking in single file, watching where we place our feet, stopping often to listen. Nellie and I cautiously round a curve in the Old Colonial Road. Ahead , nestled below Old Cabin Hill, Hyla Pond, a water-filled depression among the trees twenty feet across and dark with decaying leaves, has shed its winter covering of ice.
Each year no sooner has the ice melted from this swamp water than the wood frogs, those earliest of our batrachians to mate, congregate here. Warmed by fires within they sport in the frigid water filling he air with their low din of their grating, quacking calls. At times the mingled voices resemble… the quacking of domestic ducks.”
Writer’s Note: At Marcy’s Woods the wood frogs came, mated and in a week and a half went their separate ways. Timing for us was important.